2025 Tasmanian Postcount: Lyons

ALL NUMBERS HERE ARE UNOFFICIAL - CHECK THE TEC PAGE FOR OFFICIAL NUMBERS

LYONS (2024 Result 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 JLN)

(At Election 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 Nat)

SEATS WON 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 SFF

SEAT WINNERS: Jane Howlett (Lib), Guy Barnett (Lib), Mark Shelton (Lib), Jen Butler (ALP), Brian Mitchell (ALP), Tabatha Badger (Green), Carlo Di Falco (SFF)

SEAT LOST: Andrew Jenner (Nat)

NOTE: The Lyons count involves a complex Hare-Clark scenario and has been rated Wonk Factor 4/5.  

Click here for link to tallyboard page with links to other postcounts

Last and very far from least, Lyons, with an interesting final seat contest.  It will be one of the great stories of Tasmanian elections, whatever you think of his politics, if serial candidate Carlo Di Falco gets up for the battling but ever trying Shooters Fishers and Farmers at his 8th attempt at public office (that's even one more than Craig Garland).  The party's campaign was so bereft of visible presence that I thought they would have trouble getting over the far more visible Nationals, even though the Nats campaign was, putting it kindly, cow manure.  

I start this piece on Sunday night with 64.7% counted.  Lyons generally lags because of having a high out of electorate vote and is lagging even more this year, so this count is still very incomplete.

The Liberals have 3.319 quotas, Labor 2.301 quotas, the Greens 1.075, Di Falco 0.572 and the Nats 0.339.  There's also .394 quotas between eight colourful independents, of whom just one is clearly left-wing.  

On paper Di Falco has a whopping lead even if it may drop off somewhat in what's to come, and he also has the advantage of being a lone candidate.  His total cannot lose votes to leakage, he will just keep gaining preferences through the cutup.  

That sounds extremely callable but the potential issue that I see is the split within the Liberal ticket.  Yes it's the Ginninderra Effect again.  Jane Howlett has topped the poll [edit 24/7: not anymore!] with quota and her surplus will elect Guy Barnett if he doesn't end up getting a quota on primaries too.  But Mark Shelton has less than half a quota (currently .458) and leads the next Liberal Stephanie Cameron by just .17 of a quota.

To illustrate how this works, let's suppose the preferences coming from the other three Liberals and the small Howlett surplus split evenly between Shelton and Cameron and none of them leave the ticket.  On current numbers this would leave Shelton on 5039 votes, still well short of quota of 6768, and Cameron on 3888.  That puts Cameron almost level with Di Falco, who is on 3869.  These candidates would be the final three, they all wouldn't reach quota, and if the Liberals could get twice as many preferences between them as Di Falco they could both beat him,   

However, votes do leak out of tickets; the two Liberals will drop about 200 each to leakage from these numbers, some of which will go to Di Falco.  

A question is also how even the split between the Liberals will be.  In 2024 these same two candidates ended up as the last two Liberals standing and Shelton gained 2201 votes to Cameron's 1905.  Shelton especially gained on votes from outside the ticket (Tucker who is now a National and also the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers who won't be eliminated this time) but Cameron gained on two of the three Liberal exclusions, including Richard Hallett who is on the ballot again this year.  Cameron could do well on the Liberal exclusions this time because all three minor Liberals are fellow farmers and two of them are fellow female farmers.  Do the Lyons Liberals have any other sort of candidate?  

I haven't been able to find a 2 Liberals vs 1 SFF preference case that's really comparable; I did find that with 3 vs 1 SFF got 417 preferences to the Liberals' 755 off the preferences of John Tucker (then IND) in 2024.  This suggests it won't be easy for the Liberals to get a strong enough flow from Nationals or others to bother Di Falco.

Also I suspect the indie votes will help Di Falco.  Some of them are likeminded candidates (Bigg is a former SFF regular) and anti-stadium voting may strengthen the flow from the Nationals as well as minor indies.  

All up I think the Liberals have to at least improve their current position relative to Di Falco by several hundred votes before they're really in the hunt, and that while it is not as clear as the party totals suggest, Di Falco is currently very well placed.  

While Labor are close to the Liberals on raw total their vote is too concentrated in their two leading candidates Jen Butler and Brian Mitchell, so Labor have no ability to stay in touch with Di Falco on current figures.  The Nats will also at some point get reduced to just John Tucker, who will not get over Cameron and therefore won't be able to get Liberal preferences. 

Tuesday 22nd: Yesterday's phone votes did weaken Di Falco's position slightly, he now has .559 Q vs Liberals .3.324.  66.7% counted.  

Wednesday 23rd: Di Falco down again on out of division votes, now .553 vs Liberals 3.369.  82.15% counted.  I saw some scrutineering of IND/Nat candidates who will be excluded, which in general suggested the Liberals may make some gains on Di Falco, but nothing that looks like enough all else being equal.  

Thursday 24th: Not sure where this came from but Barnett has got ahead of Howlett and is now topping the poll; currently both are over quota.  Also the Shelton/Cameron gap is out to .20 quotas which is not good for the Liberals' chances of holding two candidates above Di Falco.  

6 pm: Di Falco 0.544 Liberals 3.358.  

Sat 26th: Sometime today a Friday update was posted (the last til final primaries on Tuesday).  Di Falco 0.539 Liberals 3.361.  All up the Liberal ticket are now about 700 votes closer to Di Falco than they were last Sunday.  If the Liberal ticket preferences split evenly and none leak, Cameron is now 371 votes ahead, but after leakage Cameron would be say 300 behind, and the Liberals would need to beat Di Falco on preferences 2-1 (which won't happen).  So I think the only way the Liberals possibly win this is if the Liberal ticket preferences flow much more strongly to Cameron than Shelton, and I'm not even sure that would do it.  

Something else here is Howlett is now 13 below quota. If she doesn't go over quota on primaries she will on Barnett's surplus, this will make for a faster preference throw than them both being over.

Tuesday 29th: What To Watch For

Ahead of the start of the preference throw action, these will be the main things to keep an eye on in this count:

* As Liberal surplus votes are thrown and minor Liberal candidates excluded, what is the split of votes between the two Liberals?  The Liberals need Stephanie Cameron to outperform Mark Shelton on these to have a chance.  After the Barnett and Howlett surpluses the next clear idea we'll get on this will be Bree Groves' exclusion, but that's likely to be not until late tomorrow.  

* Overall how does Di Falco track on preferences compared with Cameron, rather than with the Liberal ticket as a whole?  This is especially significant as votes leave tickets and as ungrouped candidates are excluded.  Apart from the Offord ticket it will be well into the count before the Labor, Greens and Nationals tickets have their last candidate excluded.  

12:20 pm: Final primaries are up, Howlett is just short of quota so the action will start with Guy Barnett's surplus followed by Howlett's surplus off Barnett.  Final quota totals were Di Falco 0.539 Liberals 3.360.

1:00 And we're off but it's a bad start for the Liberals with Shelton getting 190 off the Barnett surplus but Cameron only 59.

A metric I will be tracking is the gap between Di Falco and Cameron on the assumption that Cameron ultimately gets 45% of all Liberal votes to be distributed.  Currently Cameron leads on this metric by 36 votes.  I expect this to generally drift backwards through the count but it will be a sign of whether Cameron is remaining competitive.  

2:29: On my Lyons metric Cameron's lead is down to nine after the surplus of Howlett and the first exclusion (Dare).  

2:38: The first National, Haddon-Cave, is out, with 20% leaking from the Nationals ticket. 

4:43 Not much has been happening for a while but we're coming up to a possibly interesting exclusion, Phillip Bigg, who ran with Shooters, Fishers and Farmers several times but this time ran as an independent.  On the metric I was tracking before Di Falco is already ahead of Cameron, albeit by only 15 votes.  A more useful way to monitor it might be the share of Liberal preferences Cameron needs to catch Di Falco assuming no leakage, this is currently at 45.3% but will rise.  Di Falco is continuing to outscore Cameron on the minor exclusions.  

5:13 The Bigg exclusion was the last for today and Di Falco gained 106 to Cameron's 5.  Cameron would now need 47.3% of Liberal preferences to catch Di Falco.  Tomorrow there will be a string of minor Greens and ungrouped exclusions for a while; the latter will be more interesting than the former.  It will take about ten more exclusions to get to the first Liberal exclusion.  

10:00 A couple of Greens exclusions didn't change much, Cameron now needs 47.4%.  Jiri Lev now being excluded could be a bit more interesting.

10:55 Another pickup for Di Falco off Lev, gaining 49 while Cameron gained only 12, so Cameron now needs 48.4% of Liberal preferences.  At least two Labor and Greens exclusions now before the first really important one which is Groves.

12:30 Groves exclusion on now.  First test of whether Cameron can make gains relative to Shelton off the minor Liberal candidates.  

2:00 Cameron got not much on the Groves exclusion compared to Shelton (a lot flowed from Groves to Lyne), and now needs 52.9% of remaining Liberal preferences to catch up.  Jenner now excluded, the first incumbent excluded.  

2:45 Jenner out and Cameron now needs 53.5% of remaining Liberal preferences to catch Di Falco.  (Which isn't impossible but the Liberals also lose votes on leakage and on any time preferences coming from somewhere else aren't favouring them 2 to 1).   

3:23 Offord out and Di Falco picks up about 150 there; Cameron now needs 56.0% of remaining Liberal preferences to catch him.  

5:20 A couple of not very interesting Greens exclusions now, but Di Falco is improving on every exclusion and Cameron now needs 56.5% of remaining Liberal preferences to catch him.  The next exclusion is Dracoulis who is the last left in the ungrouped column; that will be significant and I'm expecting Di Falco will gain again.  Stumps day 2

Thursday 31st 10:20 Now the exclusion of Poppy Lyne (Lib).  Di Falco gained over 300 off Dracoulis and Cameron now needs 62% of Liberal preferences to catch him.  Unless Cameron gets a massive share off Lyne the Liberals' chances of four will be over.  

12:00 Cameron did actually do very well off Lyne, getting 899 to 439 for Shelton.  But the mountain still got steeper - she now needs 67.9% of Richard Hallett's preferences to catch Di Falco, even assuming none leak let alone to him, to say nothing of Di Falco gaining on votes coming out of other tickets.  Nationals preferences in other seats have only slightly favoured the Liberals over SFF.  

It's notable here that Labor have actually got ahead of the Liberals on raw quotas but this is because they still have five candidates in the count and a lot of leakage to come.  I do not see a realistic path for anyone to beat Di Falco at this point.  

1:00 Badger is elected with a large surplus (over 1000) that will now leave the Greens ticket and take a while to rethrow.

2:00 Badger surplus done, now the exclusion of Shannon Campbell (ALP) followed by Hallett, then probably Tucker.  

3:30 Hallett exclusion on now; Cameron did actually make a modest gain on Di Falco off leakage from Campbell (the famous Scottish clans vote?) Anyway Cameron needs a humungous share of these (71.5% to draw level with Di Falco, in reality probably more)

4:50 Finally the Hallett throw is done, Di Falco 1242 clear of Cameron and while the Nats preferences have slightly favoured the Liberals elsewhere they have to on average split more than 2-1 to the Liberals for Cameron to make a gain at all. CALLED. And stumps day 3.

Friday Aug 1st 9:50 Tucker excluded and Di Falco is about 2000 up on Cameron.  Casey Farrell now excluded after the shortest stay in parliament since Neville Oliver in Franklin 2002.  

11:15 Butler now elected.  Probably Goss won't pass Cameron on Butler's surplus so Goss will be the final exclusion, putting Mitchell over with a huge surplus, and then we will see if that elects anyone else or if it is just the end with all of Shelton, Di Falco and Cameron short of quota and the former two elected.  Will be a slow finish because of the very large size of the Labor bundles.  

1:05 Goss excluded.  Between Goss's exclusion and Mitchell's surplus 4403 votes will leave the Labor ticket but probably about half will exhaust; I don't think anyone else will get quota though Di Falco could at least overtake Shelton.  

1:40 Mitchell elected.  A rather large 18.5% leak off Goss out of the Labor ticket.  Mitchell surplus is 3219.  Di Falco has a good chance to pass Shelton off these, he is 428 behind.  

2:25 To my surprise, Shelton hung on for sixth!  The final margin Di Falco to Cameron was 2685 (3.58%).  In terms of swing to win, given that Shelton would need to be brought to quota, a swing of 2.30% from the Shooters Fishers and Farmers to the Liberals would have seen a Liberal win.  

Hope for serial candidates everywhere (well maybe not Vern Hughes or Anthony Fels) as Carlo Di Falco salutes at at least his eighth state or federal attempt, having previously got I think one deposit back ever.